Q Poll: Ohio leaning Democratic, but only slightly
Stop us if you've heard this one before: in a key battleground state, one essential to Barack Obama's chances and rich in electoral votes, the president's numbers are sagging. His job approval is underwater, and his re-elect numbers sag into the low-to-mid 40s.
Yet despite all of that, he remains ahead of his leading Republican challengers, proving for the 328th time this cycle that the quality of one's opposition does matter come election time.
Today's data point to (once again) confirm this meme comes from a poll released midweek by the folks at Quinnipiac, who not only have the president leading his GOP suitors, but actually incrementally pulling away from them.
Quinnipiac. 10/17-23. Registered Ohio voters. MoE 2.4% (Sept results in parentheses)
Barack Obama (D): 45 (44)
Mitt Romney (R): 41 (42)
Barack Obama (D): 47 (--)
Herman Cain (R): 39 (--)
Barack Obama (D): 47 (44)
Rick Perry (R): 36 (41)
Quinnipiac also provides additional confirmation, as if any was needed, of the October swoon of one Rick Perry. Not only does the Texas governor tank in a general election trial heat when paired with Barack Obama, he also has slid to a very distant third in the state's primary election calculus. Indeed, one month after he was breathing down then frontrunner Mitt Romney's neck, he is now circling the drain, clinging to a tie for fifth place on the GOP side:
GOP Primary (September results in parentheses)
Herman Cain: 28 (7)
Mitt Romney: 23 (24)
Ron Paul: 8 (6)
Newt Gingrich: 7 (4)
Rick Perry: 4 (20)
Michele Bachmann: 4 (3)
Jon Huntsman: 2 (1)
Rick Santorum: 1 (4)
Once again, the primary poll does nothing but confirm conventional wisdom: Cain booming, Perry busting, and Romney flatlined in the low 20s. It leads to a natural question: if Cain craps out soon (and there is ample reason to think that he will, given an uneven debate performance and some less-than-flattering media attention), who becomes the next anti-Romney? It could be Newt Gingrich, who slides into fourth place here and has been the "bronze medallist" in most of PPP's recent state surveys. Or maybe the GOP will, at long last, stop worrying and love the Mitt. Given his tepid polling, however, that just doesn't seem likely. A second wind for Perry seems equally likely at this point.
Meanwhile, on the Senate level, the Q poll is actually pretty bullish on the Democratic incumbent here, Sen. Sherrod Brown. Earlier this month the Republican field, for all intents and purposes, was narrowed to one, as legislator Kevin Coughlin's decision to bail paved an easier path for state treasurer Josh Mandel. But Mandel is, according to the Q poll, down by a pretty wide margin to Brown, who leads the young Republican by a 49-34 margin. Brown's lead over Mandel tracks his pretty laudable approval numbers closely. Brown is currently sitting on a 50/30 approval spread, which is on balance pretty damned good for a Congressional incumbent.
It is worth noting that our polling pals over at PPP looked at the Buckeye State last week, and found considerably more pessimistic numbers there for both Sherrod Brown (who they had leading Mandel by only an 8-point spread) and Barack Obama (their poll had Romney tied with the president, with Cain down just 3 points). The Democrats would never rest easy in a critical state like Ohio, at any rate. But the presence of additional, and less optimistic, polling serves as a reminder that the state is anything but secure for the blue team.